**********
The Technical Braille Center
by John J. Boyer
**********
From the Editor: For individual Braille users perhaps the
most exciting part of the recent advent of relatively low-cost
Braille translation software and Braille embossers has been the
ready access we now have to literary Braille. If the text is in a
computer file or can be put into a file, obtaining a clear
Braille version is now pretty straightforward.

The same cannot be said for musical notation or scientific
or mathematic texts. If one needs access to graphs or technical
drawings, the same sort of roadblocks appear. A new resource is
now available to those facing such problems. Computers Helping
People, Inc. (CHPI) is a small company in Madison, Wisconsin,
dedicated to solving such problems with care, speed, and
efficiency. John Boyer started the company; this is what he says
about it:
**********
The Technical Braille Center produces books in Braille,
large print, and special electronic forms for scientists,
engineers, and mathematicians who are blind, dyslexic, or
paralyzed. It also provides books for students preparing for
careers in the technical professions, who urgently need the
equivalent of the printed materials their peers use. We also
produce Braille music.

Our center capitalizes on new technology for the translation
of mathematics into various media. It is run by the person who
developed the technology (a deaf-blind computer scientist). It
taps into the skills and idealism of the students and staff of
Madison's many institutions of higher education. It is part of a
private, nonprofit corporation. Since it is not a unit of any
government agency or educational institution, it can offer its
services to everyone. It began operation in the spring of 1997
and has now produced several textbooks.

The books are prepared by a small group of specially trained
editors who are themselves familiar with mathematical and musical
notation and are trained in the production of tactile graphics,
which enable blind readers to study graphs, charts, and diagrams.

The software used to translate books works well when
transcribing plain text, but it often produces errors and
inconsistencies when the pages have unusual formats containing
diagrams, graphs, or equations. This limitation is what makes
Brailling technical texts so difficult. The content must be
painstakingly edited by those familiar with the mathematical and
musical notation used. This editing process accounts for 90
percent of the time (and cost) required to produce the finished
product. The pages are produced using an interpoint Braille
embosser.

For each text the activities are as follows:

1) Agencies and individuals place orders by contacting CHPI
by mail, fax, e-mail, phone, or dropping by the East Johnson
Street office. Small jobs can be paid for at the conclusion of
the work. For jobs over several hundred dollars we require that
the person making the order sign a transcription contract and pay
half the estimated price in advance. The estimate is made by
counting the number of print pages to be transcribed, determining
the number of Braille pages that will result from each print page
and counting the number of graphics which must be produced in
tactile form. This process is complex, particularly since our
costs change as we develop the technology. For these reasons we
generally ask the customer to send us the book so that we can
make an accurate estimate.

2) The books must be electronically scanned, which puts the
entire text into a word-processing file. In music translation
some musical notation is too complex to be scanned using the
procedure described above. In these cases a skilled musician
plays the piece directly into the computer using a MIDI keyboard,
which works much like a piano.

3) The text parts of the file are carefully edited and
formatted. Musical parts are edited with software that shows the
music in the usual graphical form on the screen. Verbal and
numeric information on graphics is edited and placed in
appropriate positions on the page.

4) The file is run through the translation program and
turned into actual Braille. The program was developed by CHPI in
partnership with Braille Planet, Inc. (formerly Raised-Dot
Computing, Inc.), another Madison nonprofit.

5) The Braille text is proofread by a skilled Braille
reader, final corrections are made to the inkprint version, and
it is then printed in Braille a final time.

6) The graphical parts of figures are hand-drawn because the
Braille embosser cannot produce graphics of sufficient quality.
The original paper copies of figures are kept so that they can be
used to produce additional copies of the book. The figures are
transferred to plastic sheets which are bound with the paper
sheets containing the text and music.

7) The completed Braille volumes are shipped to the
customer. The first few volumes can be shipped as soon as they
are completed without waiting for the whole book to be finished.

8) After a book is shipped, we keep the files on our
computers so that we can provide copies to other people who need
them. We also place information on them in the LOUIS database at
the American Printing House for the Blind. You can find out what
we have available by looking at our own book list.